


The Killer

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 03:27:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13825491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: There's a serial killer in Cascade





	The Killer

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2018 Sentinel Bingo prompt 'breaking the fourth wall'

The Killer

by Bluewolf

There was a serial killer in Cascade.

He had already killed four people - an elderly woman, a young man, and two young girls. He had been identified by the way he left the bodies - lying neatly on their backs, their hands clasped on their chests, and a lily projecting from their hands.

There was no indication of what had actually killed them, though Dan Wolf suspected cyanide, a poison that quickly metabolized in the body - though in that case the killer was keeping them somewhere, unconscious but alive, for some hours.

But at least he hadn't brutalized his victims, and the girls hadn't been raped. He'd only been interested in killing... and killing without damaging the bodies.

Jim read through Dan's reports with an increasingly grim expression, passing the pages to Blair as he finished them.

As Jim passed him the last page, Blair said slowly, "You know, something about this... "

"Go on," Jim said.

"Something about this - the way the bodies are left - something about it feels familiar, somehow, though I can't think why."

"Familiar?" Jim asked.

"As if I've heard something like it before, somewhere."

"Must have been a long time ago, then."

"It's making me wonder if this killer struck someplace else, years ago, maybe in more than one place, and I happened to be there and heard about it. But that'd be over fourteen years ago. I'll do some meditating tonight, try to recover the memory."

But he didn't need to. On the way home that evening, they passed one of Cascade's theatres. Blair happened to be looking out of the side window and saw the poster advertising the current play - The Ghost Hunter - due to end that week.

"That's it!" he exclaimed.

"What?" Jim asked.

"What felt familiar. It's that play! I saw it... oh, seven or eight years ago. Rainier's English department is unusual - most departments have a fixed curriculum, that covers the same ground over the course of a student's university life. Dr. Dorward, though... Oh, some things are fixed, but he varies other things as much as possible. One of the things he varies is fiction for discussion. He does one play with each class every year as well as several books, and at the end of the year there's a performance over three days, one of those plays per night. In all the time I was at Rainier he never did the same play twice. The same book, once or twice, but not any of the plays.

"I usually went to see them while I was still at Rainier - some of the performances were really good and one or two of the actors in them actually quit academia and went professional. But six or seven years ago, one of the plays was The Ghost Hunter. One of the main characters has an obsession with life after death, and during the course of the play he poisons several people, and each time he leaves the body laid out as if in a funeral parlor and with a flower in their hands. He's hoping that at least one of them will come back as a ghost and tell him what life after death is like. It was a powerful play, though it weirded me out.

"At the end he kills himself - takes poison, then as he's dying lies down with a flower in his hand as if he's a victim too - because nobody has come back to tell him what it's like, and he's so obsessed that he decides that dying is the only way to find out."

They drove on in silence for a minute, then Blair went on. "I'd say our killer is either someone so influenced by the play that he's acting out the obsession - or it's the actual actor living the part."

"Living the part, Chief?"

"Method acting, Jim. Some actors find that the easiest way to get into a part is to start behaving the way the character does. It's not quite breaking the fourth wall, but it's close - taking things off the stage and into real life."

"Okay," Jim said. "Say you're right. It tells us why - but not who. Because I really can't see an actor being so carried away by his role that he's going to start killing people."

But five days later, on the morning after the play finished its run, one more body was found - that of the actor who had played the killer. In his pocket was a note - "Nobody actually died in the play; but none of the people I really killed came back to tell me what death is like... so I have to find out for myself."

Blair shook his head. "I told you it was a powerful play," he said. "But I didn't think even a method actor would be so carried away by it that he would mistake fiction for fact."

Jim sighed. "I wonder... once this story gets out, will any theatre ever put on this play again?"

"Well," Blair said, "it's not one I ever want to see again. And I wonder - when he reads about this in tomorrow's paper - what Dr. Dorward will think, when he remembers he once give it to a class of eighteen-year-olds as a subject for discussion."

 


End file.
